$800 million UW's main budget culprit

UW Provost Lee Huntsman pinpointed the UW's deferred maintenance costs as one of the major drains on the University's already tight budget in a meeting in Kane Hall yesterday evening.

According to Huntsman, nearly $800 million of maintenance costs will play a leading role in budget constraints in upcoming years.

"We haven't been keeping this place up," Huntsman told a nearly student-free crowd of professionals and faculty at yesterday's 2001-03 UW Budget Campus Conversation.

"This is a season of fiscal stringency. This is a season of choices and limits. And I would say of the state level, it's a season of denial," Huntsman said.

Co-hosted by President Richard McCormick, the conversation focused on the UW budget committee's desire for input from the UW community. Such an opportunity was available following Huntsman's presentation, yet both administrators admitted that no decisions will be made for months.

To find the money to manage the UW's long-term needs, Huntsman said budget strategies cannot depend solely on tuition and tax increases.

"We must bring other forms of (financial) support into this University," Huntsman said. "We cannot float this institution on the back of students or by the money of tax payers."

Huntsman, offering a Powerpoint presentation of the University's financial commitments and emphasizing the need for "budget discipline" in the future, expressed the need for the UW to increase autonomy from state financial contributions.

"The state is unlikely to be the partner and investor that we need," Huntsman said. "The state is financially paralyzed. We cannot let paralysis of the state be the paralysis of the UW."

Expanding his idea of the state's paralysis, Huntsman said the state is "fundamentally in trouble.

"Costs are up and revenue is down," Huntsman said. "The state's under a lot of pressure."

In order to remedy this "season of fiscal stringency," Huntsman spoke of both short-term and longer-term concurrent budget planning over the next 12 months. In the next few months, the short-term budget planning will involve budget-committee meetings between administrators, faculty and students to discuss plans for balancing the budget. After incorporating final state budget decisions, McCormick and Huntsman will present the UW's budget to the Board of Regents in June. By July 2001, the board will adopt a final 2001-03 budget plan.

Longer-term budget planning will prove more challenging, but "there is light at the end of the tunnel in successfully financing this institution," Huntsman said.

In his opening comments, McCormick said the University's financial strain is the result of too little investment in higher education during the prosperous 1990s.

"Due to poor planning, this university is facing budget cuts," McCormick said. "That is the reason for the difficult decisions facing us this afternoon."

Longer-term budget planning strategies depend on bringing in new revenues to the University.

"We need to rebalance and reallocate resources we have or we're not going to fix the budget in the long haul," Huntsman said. "Our greatest hope is philanthropy. Our peer [institutions] have done so very effectively."

Despite the absence of concrete budget decisions so far this biennium, Huntsman considers a disciplined budget as the key to healing the long-term budget crisis.

"Budget discipline is the only way to move forward in this season," Huntsman said. "We must take responsibility for the future of the UW."